Fuck the gazelles, I'm running solo

Love Hurts

Well, Since my sister is in rehab right now, I figured I would tell a story about a defining moment my sister created that forever changed my life for the better. A few things you have to understand about the relationship we have, while growing up we did nothing but fight and scheme on each other. As we got older we started growing closer and when our mother died, there was a while when we felt we were all that each other had. Another effect Mom’s departure had on me was that I started a cycle of heavy drinking and partying, a downward spiral I would not come out of for a few years.

One instance while black-out, belligerently inebriated, a friend and I decided to go for a drive to get more alcohol. I’ll skip the details of the night, but the end result was me, spinning out in my truck and hitting a row of parked cars. Little damage was done to the parked cars, but the whole side of my truck was trashed. Being drunk, young, and not wanting to deal with this situation I left the scene and some how made it to my girlfriends house. The only thing I know that can make a horrible hang over worse, is having a horrible hang over, a thrashed truck, and trying to piece together what the hell happened last night.

Still not wanting to deal with the situation I stayed out of that town for a while hoping it would all pass over and take care of itself in time. So I spent the next few days with a pain in my stomach. Its that sick feeling you get when you know you have to do something you don’t want to, so you try not to think about and pretend it doesn’t exist. Then I get the call.

“hello?” I answer

“Jeff, what is going on?” Sis asks

“What do you mean?” I say, still pretending like that pain isn’t there

“Two sheriffs just came to my house asking where you are, they said you involved in a felony hit-and-run, and they needed you to turn yourself in and take care of this.”

At this point my face turns pale, that ill feeling in my stomach I was ignoring is now raging through-out my chest and heart. A few things flash threw my mind, the one that sticks out is my future as a felon. I now realize that I can’t live a “normal” life. I now have to live the life of a criminal. I can’t get a real job, I’m going to have to steal and fence for a living and probably never come out of the bottle again so that I will never have to deal with myself again. All this, after I get out after 3 years good behavior. I see myself tied to my truck, my once cherry low rider now dented and nauseating truck, for the rest of my life. I sleep there, live out of there, everything. Our fate, intertwined. We spun out of control together only to emerge a faint glow of the thing we were before, it will become the symbol of when I hit bottom and never resurfaced. I’ll be another deadbeat brother/son/nephew/father?.. In time, probably.
All of that in the forward half of a blink, the back half was dedicated to my response.

I came clean. I told here everything, cried, then told her more.
“You see how that feels?” She explained “That is how close you were, that is where you are headed if you keep this up. The cops didn’t come, your friend called me and told me what happened.”

I’m still shaking at this point

“We need to see what we are going to do about this and straighten your life out.”
I still get chills.

After that conversation I began the task of crawling upward to the world of responsibility and adulthood. I’m not going to say there weren’t a couple more stumbles along the way, there were for sure. Though, seven years later I am proud of the person I have become, but never as happy as when my sis, my guiding light, tells me that she is proud of me.

To this day, any new friends I meet have to meet my sister before I’ll let them into my inner circle. I just hope I can be the sturdy rock for my little sister like my older sister was for me.

I am so glad that you guys have come together as a family. You are lucky to have such a loving, caring and intelligent sister (she sure was clever with that phone call). I am sure that Jen is very proud of you. It takes a lot of character and determination to recognize your mistakes and turn your life around. You should be proud of yourself not only because you have been able to correspond the love of your sisters, but because you have had it in you to persevere and overcome such difficult circumstances.